“The Last Man on Earth” by Wolf Alice

"The Last Man on Earth" broke Wolf Alice's silence on 24 February 2021, their first new single in close to 3 years and the opening shot for their third album, Blue Weekend. The gap had been earned: they'd spent 2018 and the start of 2019 on the road behind Visions of a Life. Ellie Rowsell said the song takes aim at human arrogance, sparked by reading Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and then catching herself wanting every little thing to carry some grand meaning.

Rowsell sings and plays piano, Jonathan Oddie is on guitar, Theo Ellis on bass and Joel Amey on drums and synth, and all four share the writing. Markus Dravs produced it and Mark "Spike" Stent mixed, with Owen Pallett's violin and viola, Mike Olsen's cello and Iain Berryman's trumpet widening the frame into something close to dream pop. The band first played it for Later... with Jools Holland in a pre-recorded set that March, then shared a candlelit take on YouTube in April.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.